Parature, a provider of cloud-based customer service software, earlier this week released a new version of its Parature Service Desk to streamline efficiencies for customer service representatives (CSRs).

With the 2012 Parature Service Desk software, CSRs will log into a new agent interface with faster, easier access to customer information, as well as improved usability and readability for even more efficient customer service and support.

"Our customers' experience, and in turn, the service experience of their customers, is incredibly important to us," said Ching-Ho Fung, CEO and co-founder of Parature, in a statement. "As we approach 50 million end users, innovating Parature's service desk means even more to us. For our new customers, and for those who have been with us more than a decade, we want to give them the best UI available, a UI for the next generation of service agents."

Features of the 2012 Parature Service Desk include the following:

Service Desk User Experience Enhancements: The new service desk now reflects Parature's new branding, giving Parature users improved usability and readability, with more service desk information now located above the fold and available for view without additional scrolling. This next-gen UI makes key customer service processes and the 360-degree view of the customer quickly accessible for improved usability.

New Customer Toolkit: The Ticket Toolkit puts the most critical customer information in view at all times, showing the top 10 customer and account fields. Agents also have one-click access from the Toolkit to open full customer or account information in a new tab. A new WYSIWYG editor provides increased speed and usability.

Advanced Customer Search: Agents can now find customers more quickly and easily via a single search. An updated Customer Quick Search feature now searches across all fields for a contact. CSRs enter their search term and Parature's software searches across all fields on the customer, including custom fields, account name, and SLA.

Real-time Parature Performance Updates: Status.parature.com provides real-time information on the performance of the Parature system, allowing users to check and view the performance status of Parature at any time, and provides RSS notifications of any system issues.

Share Ideas for CSRs: Share Ideas allows users to submit and vote on product enhancements and feature requests. Parature continuously reviews all submissions and votes and uses these as inputs to the product roadmap. The product team updates ideas as they are placed on the roadmap, planned for a next release, or released into production.

Audit History/Change Tracking: Customer administrators can now track who has made changes to customer and account fields, when they made changes, and what changes have been made to provide better accountability.

Email Reply Settings: New settings provide control over how email replies act on closed or solved tickets.

Discrete CC Notifications: A new option specific to notifications to CC'ed customers or CSRs ensures companies reach the right audience with its message.

Custom Assign Action: Ticket administrators cam map assign or clone actions to a specific queue or department. In turn these actions can be integrated into the workflow to only be available to specific users or at specific times.

Comparisons for Null, Not Null to Criteria Editor: New Criteria Editor supports "null" and "not null" comparisons, simplifying rules logic and making it easier to maintain.

Parature to JIRA Integration: This integration improves collaboration and communication between your support agents working in Parature and your developers working in JIRA, the leading bug tracking and project tracking software, by automatically creating JIRA issues from Parature tickets and updating important information between the two systems.

Parature is also introducing its mobile service desk, which includes Web-based mobile access to the Parature service desk via all major mobile and tablet browsers (W7, Android, Mobile Safari). The service desk always remains up to date, with no app to update or install. Agents can switch between multiple Parature departments, look up tickets by ticket number, access ticket views and queues, perform actions, and update tickets.

"We've designed this new version of our Service Desk with the agent in mind, incorporating important feedback from our clients on what would make things more efficient for them," Fung said in the statement. "We're proud to roll out these features to our more than 1,000 customers, and will continue to make improvements to both our Service Desk and Customer Portal to constantly improve on the customer service experience and ensure our commitment to service excellence."